Wikipedia defines Media bias as “bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of which events and stories are reported and how they are covered. The term “media bias” implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed’ .

In case of India, media is accused of being favorably predisposed to a left leaning ideological position and nurturing a partisan political bias towards the ruling Congress establishment. Leaked Radia tapes clearly established how the discredited doyens of Indian media, while masquerading as neutral and non-partisan, actually operated on behalf of their political benefactors.

As part of establishing more rigor in to understanding the print media bias in India , CRI MediaWatch decided to select 25 English language newspapers based on host of criterion including audited circulation/geographical focus/online presence and decided to invite a set of eminent media experts to mark the selected newspapers on political leanings and ideological dispositions. The expert panel was also requested to provide details substantiating on why they marked the newspaper they way they did it.

To be fair we cannot claim that results of the survey were surprisingly. Results were quite predictable and establishes clearly that the accusation of centre-left/ Congress bias is not a myth created by vast right wing conspirators or outcome of a successful propaganda by right wing fear factory. In fact survey results demonstrate utter lack of counter narrative and abysmally low presence of right wing media outlets in English print media landscape

We tried to expand this study to cover the regional media landscape as well(see results tomorrow) and picture is even more disturbing. As one of our media experts so put it “We have two categories of media outlets in India -government owned or Congress controlled ‘” While we concede an element of hyperbole in that statement, he wasn’t far off the mark

Editorial team of CRI wishes to thank the expert panel for time spend on rigorous scanning of public literature on newspaper ,independent enquirers supplemented with their own knowledge of the media landscape

I was pleasantly surprised to know that only sixty percent of media is biased in favour of the UPA . More than ninety percent of mainstream English language media is of left – liberal-secular leanings . There are many reasons for this . First , it is fashionable to show one’s left-liberal-secular propensities . Second , it gives them the tag to be progressive . Third , it gives them the opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the powers that be as most of the political parties , barring two or three , vie with one another in claiming that their ideology is left – liberal – secular . In the Indian context it requires a lot of guts to declare that one is a rightist .

http://twitter.com/SivaChandan SATHYA SIVA CHANDAN

Very detailed and informative survey.Well done.

btw Deccan Chronicle is a hard core Congress, anti-sanghparivar and a newspaper which dedicates the maximum space to filmi news,gossip and sleaze.Bad English and titillating pictures are it’s trademarks.I don’t advise people to waste even that 1 rupee on this cheap paper.

http://twitter.com/sathyanveshi Sathyanveshi

It’s true worth is less than that of toilet paper!

http://twitter.com/tweetingsourav Sourav Mukherjee

But, then you will have to remove Hindustan Times from the competition. I once bought a copy on Lucknow station while on train journey (for some strange reason all paperwalas that i encountered were selling Hindustan Times or Dainek Jagran, no TOI ) It has to be uncontroversially the worst news paper I have ever come across (including the CPIMs official vernacular mouth piece). The paper was bought at about 7:45am by 8:00am we were using it’s pages for cleaning spilled breakfast, wrapping slippers etc. It was that bad! (The Deccan Chronicle, at least in Hyderabad is far better.)

http://twitter.com/Jakebinge Jake B

Extremely interesting..how would you classify Mid day, Mail Today and Mint?
IMHO Midday is largely centrist and has little political leaning; Mail today is completely Pro Congress; Mint is slightly confusing; some of its views are refreshing; but some of the columnists it has li are rabidly pro left , UPA . Also Mint lounge is completely different animal…

http://twitter.com/ma_falesu Siddhartha Chatterje

Mint is pro-Congress. Let us not make any mistake about that. and Anti-India too. I can not recall a single article where it went against Congress. About ant-India articles? A plenty. Most of such articles are hidden under the garb of secularism. And who can forget one of it’s articles where one of their imbecile editors was trying to establish that Indians are stupid and ugly people.

http://twitter.com/gopimaliwal Gopi Maliwal

Mint’s edits are still more balanced n less partisan wrt BJP than those from anti-BJP ET & blind pro-UPA BS, I think.

http://www.tattvaanveshanam.org/ मानस प्रकाश

Mint was started by the HT group in collaboration with WSJ, which is a right leaning American outlet. @twitter-241265316:disqus has aptly deduced what that translates to in India. The “Political leanings details” of HT as outlined in the spreadsheet, can be easily said of Mint as well. Also, some overseas journalist(s) of Indian origin associated (not sure if they still are) with Mint are (direct or indirect) affiliates of an overseas leftist (pro-congress, rabidly anti-BJP) journalist association. Senior members of this association have been alleged to have pulled strings to gag an Indian American for writing about virulent biases against Hinduism in American religious studies academia. Some of their senior members are fans and avid supporters of socialist poverty mongers such as Medha Patkar.

While this is truly a wonderful, much needed survey and is accurate for the most part, I can’t help wonder about some pro-UPA papers being called centrist. I am sure folks here realize that congress led UPA is a leftist government and their policy pushes have a distinctive left-of-center to hard-left flavor. Some pro-Congress newspapers which have been characterized as centrist, are probably better classified as center-left. For instance, TOI and HT very rarely, if ever, provide space for any nationalist or religious/cultural majority causes. It is only with a sad longing that one reminisces the Girilal Jain days of TOI. While they may not be propounding anti-capitalist polemics a la The Hindu, their social reporting is mostly left-of-center colored. Same could also be said of the Deccan Herald and it is even more prominent in case of the Indian Express.

http://twitter.com/gopimaliwal Gopi Maliwal

I will put MailToday into rabid / pathologically blind anti-BJP/RSS column, not pro-Cong!

http://twitter.com/tweetingsourav Sourav Mukherjee

Is is possible to have any respect left for the Mint after seeing Priya Ranmani? Just asking?

http://twitter.com/ma_falesu Siddhartha Chatterje

Good job!! Anything about the regional media when all your parts about English MSM is completed? English MSM is mostly Delhi-based. Role of regional media can not be ignored when we are trying to build an alternative political voice which we hope to capture country-wide. May be we can start with a poll.

http://twitter.com/cbcnn_Pilid Pilid Lao

It would be interesting to know how many of these papers are pro/anti-establishment as opposed to pro-/anti-Congress, i.e., when the NDA was in power, how many of them supported the NDA govt too and not just the UPA as of now. Political and business interests are no doubt closely enmeshed (often where owners also hold political office) but business interests do predominate over political ones in many of them. For example, there are often sharp differences within political parties themselves on various policy issues and publications choose to support one faction over the other and the consistency of their position makes me wonder whether their strong advocacy does not have something to do with some allied business venture of their proprietors or the promise of a quid pro quo from some quarter. Secondly, where the same group owns regional and national publications with the concerned region being ruled by an opposition party, a comparison of their respective positions could be informative of editorial freedom within the set up.

While I look forward to reading the book you have mentioned, liberal bias in American media doesn’t necessarily translate to bias against the American religious/cultural majority, as it does here in India. In the US one could be liberal and yet be an avowed Christian. In fact American liberalism is more to do with economic, political and racial matters than the need to spew venom at the religious/cultural majority or treat it like a doormat. Consider the example of Hillary Clinton who doesn’t feel the need to espouse a dichotomy between being liberal and being very Christian. This is the same person who told NYT that her Christian faith is “a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in, and what I have tried to do in my life“. Ms. Clinton’s office in fact expressed support to a farcical and mischievous conference held in NY by Indian converts to Christianity which mendaciously sought to establish that Hinduism/dharma was derived from early Christianity. The thesis being that since Hinduism/dharma is merely a derivative from Christinity (never mind the luducrious mendacity of that assertion), all Hindu heathens should convert to Christianity. And yet, in spite of supporting such outright shenanigan rooted in supremacist religiocity, Ms. Clinton calls herself a liberal. Now imagine the possibility of an analogous scenario ever happening in India! In India owning to the toxicity introduced by Nehru and nurtured by Marxist academics under political patronage, it has more often than not, become necessary to take stands hostile to the religious/cultural majority to establish “liberal” credentials and move up the career ladder, be it in left-“liberal” media outlets, or in history/religious studies/political science academia.

http://twitter.com/ma_falesu Siddhartha Chatterje

Since the particular link turned out to be dead, I will provide a different link. Prof. Timothy Glossclose, a conservative sociologist, developed a model to measure the liberal bias. While his method and model (based on a numerical method called “political quotient”) needs to be analyzed carefully, nobody even tried to analyze it academically. He was unfairly hounded at every opportunity and and petitions are filed so that his university (UCLA) sack him and his research partner (similar to the petition filed against Dr. Swamy). Liberal inquisition is the price of speaking truth in a political correct world.

Coming back to the point about democrat – evangelist link mentioned by @tattvaanveshanam:disqus is quiet true. Evangelists have more impact in US politics (and US army & DC based think-tanks of all political color) than most Americans are prepared to admit. Such connections are bared by academic Iain Buchanan (to understand their impact in US military look at here). These people do not only have grand hold in republican party, they also tend to have very good relationship with top democrats. One famous example is democratic evangelist Billy Graham. The greatest success of liberalized western media is to hide such connections. Liberals support people like Billy Graham and pretend as if republican candidates are loony religious types. In fact, a new term called ecunemical democrat is invented to hide the connection in plain sight. After all, liberals are smart people, they can not see themselves being in the league of evangelists, can they?

I would rather want to see someone like George Bush promoting evangelism directly than see this game of conceit by democrats. At least, we know that state department under Bush is a direct enemy in such a case.

Un fortunately we like-minded pro Hindu Nationalists started calling THEM as LIBERALS So the precedent established. Aptly it should be “Pseudos” instead of Liberals-lets address them as so

Ram Kumar Krishnan

nice work and research, please include the findings about the english magazines also

http://twitter.com/krishnabaalu krishnabaalu

Very laudable effort Kudos! However those who read these
newspapers regularly can easily make out the patronage behind each of it. ‘Ideology’
is inapt one. The policies followed by Congress , CPM SP BSP etc are vote-bank
oriented diatribe. Off course you have
no other choice either! to convey d message

Write from preferring Rahul Gandhi to Varun Gandhi in their coverage,
and biased reportage of a highly charged communal riots the so called pro UPA
newspapers only serving their masters at the cost of National Interest defying
the very spirit of Journalism.

Krishna Baalu*

Amit Kumar Gupta

A very good effort by the team. The ‘Expert comments’ column here explains the reasons of their leanings and gives an indepth analysis.

http://anandphilip.com Anand Philip

Good work, but incomplete till 1. you reveal who the “evaluators” were and what thier affilliations/conflicts of interest are 2. reveal what parameters were used to come to the conclusions. 3. what on earth is “slightly UPA” ? either pregnant, or not.

http://twitter.com/ash_dubey Ash Dubey

Fantastic post!! Beautifully collated and summarized. THe assessment too is very factual and logical!

shiv singh

Superb….I must agree with all the details…very true and exact…I am keen to know basis of Sheet1 like how you people done that?

Think

I am a rightist. But I have been reading and researching on various newspapers and weekly/monthly magazines. To my surprise, the leftist and left-leaning newspapers, at least in India, have a better English standard and fluency. Hindu’s Frontline is probably the best in English language and can be compared to The Economist, again a left leaning magazine. On the contrary the right leaning media is lacking in English fluency. For e.g. the RSS’ mouthpiece Organizer has a pathetic English and has more grammatical errors than TOI, which is supposed to be the worst in English language in India. Even on the world wide stage, the English of Economist and New York Times, both left leaning, is better than that of UK’s Telegraph and the WSJ. I hope that more people with right-leaning ideology come to the world of journalism and boost up the field to propagate the Right.